The Road to Kaibara deals with a government faced with dissension, coup d'etat and civil war after thirty years of authoritarian rule. It chronicles national events at the micro and personal levels through the lives of two men following their failed hopes in their post-independent country. Each of them undergoes exile: Desmond Johnson flees Kaibara and Borbor Pain embraces insanity within its borders. The violence of the civil war brings them the chance to take formal power but with far more ambiguity of personal and political purpose than they had thirty years before.